doubtedly be a very significant increase in the number of jobs available in the New Jersey-New York Port area brought on by increased demands for crewmen and ships' officers. Add to this the shipbuilding activity that would be necessitated at the many now-starved shipyards ringing the harbor and the effect would be tremendous on the economy of the area.

Mr. Chairman, I would hope that the new Maritime Administration would spur both the merchant marine and the shipbuilding industry by revising our policies on awarding shipbuilding contracts, by pushing for tax incentives and low-interest loans for shipbuilders, by thoroughly reviewing our subsidy policies and by forcing this country to come to the realization that our deficient merchant marine can only be brought back to the forefront by intelligent policies and effective leadership.

Mr. Chairman, a first step to all of this is the creation of a body to devise, direct, and administer our maritime policies. To create a separate and independent Maritime Administration is the very least we can afford to do at this critical point in history.

If we had come to this realization and taken this step after Korea and not now during Vietnam, we would be in a lot better shape than we are at the present. I urge this committee to act favorably on my bill.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions?

Mr. Gallagher, the committee thanks you for your statement. It will be helpful to the committee in considering the bills.

Mr. GALLAGHER. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. We will now hear testimony from Mr. Joseph Curran, president of the National Maritime Union, who will be speaking for the Labor-Management Maritime Committee, and for the AFL-CIO Maritime Committee.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH CURRAN, COCHAIRMAN, LABOR-MANAGEMENT MARITIME COMMITTEE; ACCOMPANIED BY EARL W. CLARK AND HOYT HADDOCK, CODIRECTORS

Mr. CURRAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I am appearing first as a cochairman of the Labor-Management Maritime Committee which has been in existence for a great many years. The other cochairman of that committee is General Franklin of the United States Lines.

The two executive directors of the committee are Mr. Clark, on my left, and Mr. Haddock, on my right.

This committee represents the following steamship companies: American Export Isbrandtsen Lines; Farrell Lines, Inc.; Grace Line, Inc.; Lykes Bros. Steamship Co., Inc.: Moore-McCormack Lines, Inc.; United States Lines, Inc; Gulf and South American Steamship Co. and Prudential Lines, Inc., participating members: American Pilots Association, associate member; and the AFL-CIO Maritime Com

mittee members.

We want to submit this statement on behalf of the Labor-Management Committee on S. 159, a bill to establish the independent maritime agency.

The Labor-Management Maritime Committee appreciates the opportunity to appear before this committee and express its views with respect to S. 159, a bill to establish an independent maritime agency.

In doing so, we are mindful of the long and consistent support given by the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee on behalf of a strong U.S.-flag merchant marine. This committee is second to none in the Congress in its devotion to the cause of fostering a strong national transportation system, particularly in the segment for which it has special and unique responsibility.

The strength which the committee demonstrated in the first ses sion of the 90th Congress not only defeated the bad legislation embodied in the original administration bill-H.R. 13200--but helped to bring about more favorable proposals from both the executive branch of Government and the U.S. Senate.

For this we have earlier complimented the committee, and we do so again.

The essential problem: The Labor-Management Maritime Committee has held from the beginning that the essential problem confronting the maritime community is not where maritime functions are lodged within the executive branch of Government.

It is not whether such functions are assigned to a completely independent agency or to a duly constituted department of Government. The essential problem is to establish a positive national maritime program and surround it with an administrative climate conducive to the continued growth and progressive development of the American merchant marine.

If a completely independent maritime agency is the only, or even the best, administrative device to achieve this end, then by all means this course would be proper. If this fundamental objective can be best served through an established department of Government, then certainly this avenue should be selected.

Whatever is done, the Congress will do well to have the overall objective foremost in mind and not allow the means to assume the character of the end objective. With this in mind, we should like, with the committee's indulgence, to recap some of the developments to date since they all have a direct bearing on the matter now under consideration.

H.R. 13200 (Senate counterpart, S. 3010): The original adminis tration bill, H.R. 13200, was an exercise in futility. It called for the transfer of maritime functions from the Department of Commerce to the proposed Department of Transportation by an administrative conveyor-belt process.

It lifted the maritime agency bodily from one location to another without modification, replete with all the ills that presently afflict it. and devoid of any consideration for its betterment or revitalization. Worse than that, it would have submerged it among other transportation agencies and branches where the cause of waterborne transportation could languish with inattention and neglect.

We opposed such a proposal as H.R. 13200 then, and we oppose it now. We favored an independent maritime agency and opposed H.R. 13200. As between these two alternatives, we would favor such a

erence now.

pref

Shortly after the introduction of H.R. 13200, a labor and management group met with the distinguished ranking majority member of the Committee on Government Operations, the Honorable Chet Holifield, of California.

He sought to know what changes in H.R. 13200 would meet with the approbation of the maritime industry. We advised that our fundamental objective was a positive national maritime policy-not the matter of where governmental functions are lodged.

However, we made it clear that we felt H.R. 13200 fell sadly short on both counts and made substantive suggestions for change.

Following this meeting, we testified in cooperation with other maritime groups against the bill and made it clear that we preferred an independent agency to such legislation. We found it deficient in the following characteristics:

1. As to the Maritime Administrator, it did not require Presidential appointment with the advice and consent of the Senate.

2. It did not give the Maritime Administrator any appreciable stature within the Department.

3. As to the quasi-judicial body (Maritime Board), it did not provide appointment by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.

4. It prolonged all the ills of Reorganization Plan 7, sublimating the quasi-judicial functions to a mere administrative committee appointed by the Secretary.

5. The provisions of section 7 on investment standards and criteria gave excessive powers to the executive branch, thus diminishing the authority of the Congress in these areas.

6. The bill was introduced unassociated with any plan or program for meeting the urgent needs of our merchant marine.

The legislation was bad-exceedingly bad. If we had gotten the necessary amendments we would have supported H.R. 13200, as there are distinct advantages to the proper association of transportation agencies in a Transportation Department, as we shall specify later. However, we failed and, therefore, testified against the bill, stating our comparative preference for an independent agency.

H.R. 15963: H.R. 15963, as originally introduced, was a rehash of H.R. 13200 following scheduled hearings on the bill.

The change in number did not sufficiently clean up the defects of the earlier bill, nor did it constitute effective legislation in its maritime segments. Aside from making the Administrator a Presidential appointee, the other unsavory maritime features of the original bill remained substantially unchanged. We, therefore, opposed it.

H.R. 11696: H.R. 11696, otherwise known as the Bonner bill, after the former distinguished chairman of this committee, was a similar bill to H.R. 159 introduced this session by Chairman Garmatz and now the subject of this hearing.

The Labor-Management Maritime Committee supported the granting of a rule from the House Rules Committee for the purpose of permitting this bill to reach, and be facilitated in, debate on the House floor.

However, in a special meeting with the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee in mid-September, 1966, Mr. Haddock, speaking for

the Labor-Management Maritime Committee, made it clear that this organization "supported the basic tenets of the Bonner bill, whether in an independent agency or in a department of Government and that the important thing was to achieve a positive maritime program and a 'proper climate' under which the merchant marine could grow and prosper."

H.R. 11696, after approval by this committee, never reached debate on the floor of the House and was given no further consideration by the Congress during the last session. Meanwhile, H.R. 15963 was passed by the House with maritime functions excluded entirely.

In conference between the two Houses of Congress, the choice henceforth became not one of an independent Maritime agency versus Maritime inclusion within a Department of Transportation.

Rather, the choice offered was the Senate-revised version of H.R. 15963 versus leaving Maritime in the Department of Commerce under the House exclusion.

H.R. 15963-Revised Senate version (S. 3010): When H.R. 15963 reached the U.S. Senate, the leadership of this legislative body conferred with the codirectors of our organization, as they did with others, to determine what acceptability of the bill existed within the maritime industry.

The codirectors, in a communication to Senator Long (September 14, 1966), with copies to Senators Magnuson, Jackson, Bartlett and Brewster, responded and set forth a critical analysis of H.R. 15963 in summary form, from which we quote:

1. The original bills downgraded water transportation by making the Maritime Administrator merely a Department appointee. While H.R. 15963 was amended to make this official a Presidential appointee, subject to the advice and consent of the Senate, it still did not clothe him with broad authority to administer maritime laws and policies unshielded from multiple echelons of supervisory control. However, in its final passage, maritime functions were excluded altogether.

2. The Administration proposals further downgraded maritime transportation by denying to it a maritime board to handle promotional and quasi-judicial functions. Under the original bills, such functions were delegated to the Secretary of Transportation to handle as he will. No other media of transportation is denied a quasi-judicial body through which to discharge such responsibilities.

3. There is a complete vacuum in any fundamental policy and program pronouncement from the Administration. This is preponderantly more important and vital than merely deciding the particular house in which maritime affairs are to reside. To throw maritime under such a roof without a program is to relegate it to a ghetto of relative insignificance.

4. The maritime industry has suffered almost three years of the most inconsiderate treatment at the hands of inexperienced and academic leadership which at the end had very few constructive proposals worthy of adoption. During this period, the image of the American Merchant Marine was seriously impaired. credit for future expansion was damaged, and an appreciable surrender to foreign shipping interests was openly advocated. To date, the now discredited Interagency Maritime Task Force Report has not been publicly disavowed, although thoroughly debunked by industry analyses, including recent documentation by the Labor-Management Maritime Committee.

5. The President's own Maritime Advisory Committee, in its final report, submitted positive and widely acclaimed recommendations for achieving a strong U.S.-flag fleet. Yet these have neither been officially supported nor adopted, and no commitment has been made with respect to them. Some positive action by the Administration in this regard seems imperative.

6. Section 7 of both the Senate and the House versions of the legislation placed in the new Department such unlimited authority for setting standards and estab lishing transportation criteria as to withdraw from the Congress its normal responsibilities in these areas. Practically all modes of transportation vigorously

oppose this abdication of Congressional prerogative. The unabridged use of such authority by the Executive Branch of Government could in effect serve the purposes of legislation without resort to the Congress and leave the various modes of transportation to the sole mercy of bureaucracy. This Section was happily deleted in final passage of H.R. 15963 but still resides in S. 3010. The Senate should follow the House action and delete it from any final legislation.

These criticisms were weighed by the Senate leadership. Some MemEbers of the Senate then made inquiry as to what modification of H.R. 15963, as passed by the House, would meet the objections raised by maritime labor and management.

We recommended such changes as we felt would retain the more fundamental objectives of the Bonner bill (H.R. 11696) proposed by the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee of the House.

We considered these essential elements to include, and we quote again from our letter to Senator Long of September 15, 1966:

1. A Maritime Administration to which is assigned broad authority for carrying out our maritime laws and national policies.

2. A Maritime Administrator clothed with appropriate responsibility for administering maritime programs unfettered by pyramiding echelons of multiple supervision and control. (Note: H.R. 15963 had already been amended in the House of Representatives to require appointment by the President with advice and consent of the Senate).

3. An Independent Maritime Board within the Department-appointed by the President with advice and consent of the Senate--to perform promotional and quasi-judicial functions with no appeal except to the courts-a practice proven most successful in previous maritime agencies. (Today we would recommend one further modification of this item to provide that appeals from the decisions of the Maritime Board may be made either to the Secretary of Transportation or to the courts).

4. Concurrence with House floor action in eliminating section 7 to retain in the Congress the legislative responsibilitities which this section abrogates.

Every one of these four major recommendations was adopted by the Committee on Government Operations of the U.S. Senate and incorporated into a revised version of H.R. 15963. In addition, the Senate, on the floor, further amended the bill to increase the degree of independence of the Maritime Administrator by making his decisions final in matters requiring "public notice and hearings."

We felt these were indeed satisfactory amendments of substance. While disappointed that an administration program had not been announced, we were assured that such a program was under consideration and would be forthcoming.

Since the matter of an independent agency was never brought to the floor of either House of Congress, the choice thus became one of supporting the rather satisfactory Senate bill, or leaving maritime functions buried in the Department of Commerce under Reorganiza

tion Plan 7.

Accordingly, the Labor-Management Maritime Committee officially supported the revised Senate version of H.R. 15963 and was the first of the maritime associations and groups to do so.

Our current position: Our continued support for lodging maritime functions within the Department of Transportation is conditioned upon two things:

1. Acceptance by the administration of substantially the same amendments as were provided in the Senate version of H.R. 15963 last year, and

2. The adoption of a positive maritime program designed to promote the development of a strong merchant marine.